Product: Fitbit Charge 2

Price: $129.88 USD

Summary:

Fitbit is one of the original pioneers of the now ubiquitous activity trackers. They’re now on their second generation of the Charge device, and it’s a nice improvement from the original Charge HR. At around $130, the Fitbit Charge 2 will track your daily steps, monitor your nightly sleep, and keep tabs on your pulse rate throughout the day. It offers an easy, mindless way to keep track of your daily activity.

Uses:

Part of your daily off-season carry

Fitness tracking for training runs and hikes.

Sleep Tracking

Not appropriate for the fireline

Pros:

Sharper Display / More Metrics. One of my biggest gripes about the Fitbit Charge HR was the screen was tough to read in direct sun. Actually, it was almost impossible to even check the time when it was bright out. Fitbit made some improvements. First, they enlarged the screen. Which allows the time to be displayed together with how many steps you have taken for the day. Second, they dialed up the technology a bit, and made the screen brighter. Which improves readability during the middle of the day. But, admittedly, it can still be tough to read when the sun is beating down on you. Additionally, you can customize the display to show multiple stats at a time. Whereas before, you needed to toggle through a couple screens to get your steps and your heart rate, now, because of the larger display, you can display date, time, heart rate and steps all on the home screen. Which is nice, because you can flip your wrist up and get all the info you needed immediately. No tapping or toggling required.

Mediation / Breathing Feature. I shook my head when I saw this for the first time. Maybe the Lulumon-loving crowd would love this feature, but did I really need to be reminded to be breathe? Did I need a wearable to walk me through this? But, I gave it a try, and honestly, it’s not as worthless as I first thought. It doesn’t hurt to take two minutes every now and again to refocus. Using the vibration feature, it sets a cadence for inhaling and exhaling. Nothing fancy. Just a vibration to remind you when to exhale and when to inhale. I could have used this when I was sitting in a crew haul, staring at an enormous plume of smoke, letting my heart rate rev up to the red line.

Improved Battery Life. I was pleasantly surprised by how much longer the battery lasted compared to the Fitbit Charge HR. I have gone almost a week between charges. And that’s on the default setting, with all the bells and whistles turned on, like texts, phone, and calendar notifications.

Sleep Tracking. This is one of the biggest improvements over past models. One of the biggest keys to performance improvement is recovery, and sleep is critical in that effort. The Charge 2 offers great stats on the duration and quality of the sleep you’re getting. It is capable of breaking down how many times you were awake, how long you were in REM sleep, deep sleep, and light sleep. Great for monitoring how well you’re doing in the sleep department.

IFTT Compatibility.IFTT = If This Then That. In case you’re not familiar, the site exists to make the services that people use more productive by connecting them. Checkout some IFTT ‘recipes‘ you can use with your Fitbit.

Cons:

Touchscreen Responsiveness. At first, I was a bit annoyed by the touch screen’s temperamental moods. Sometimes, it would take multiple taps to activate the screen. Which would annoy me. Then I remembered that I paid $130 for this thing, and I shouldn’t expect this to have the same level of responsiveness as an iPhone screen. You do get what you pay for. Also, the device is supposed to be smart in that it should sense when you motion your arm to look at the device. This feature works about 75% of the time. Which can lead to multiple cases of swinging your wrist up to your face, scowling when the screen doesn’t display, and repeating the gesture. Anyone around you watching this little charade probably will think you’re either mad as a hatter or just irrationally pissed off at the time.

Weird Notifications. All of a sudden, you will get a notification to get “250 steps in”. To which I would respond by thinking, “Why?” What the hell is this? You don’t tell me what to do, Mr. Fitbit. Oh no, brotha, that’s not how it’s gonna be. You don’t boss me around.” Then I realized I was getting fired up about a whole lot of nothing, and I turned the notification off, and we’ve been cool ever since. However, if you live a sedentary, sloth-like existence (and if you’re reading this, you probably don’t), maybe being reminded to take 250 steps an hour will help you live to see 50.

No emoji support. If someone sends you an emoji or a picture via text, you can’t use your Fitbit to check it out. You’ll be alerted that you received a text, but it won’t show it. Again…if you want / need that functionality, you’re going to have pay a bit more, and should consider a device like the Apple Watch.

If you’re really considering purchasing a Fitbit Charge 2, but still need some persuading, take a look at some further reviews and feedback, which will hopefully help you make a decision. When purchasing a product like this, you really need to consider how much you will use it, whether it suits your lifestyle and whether there is a better option on the market. That’s entirely down to you!

Pro Tip:

For those of you who never read the instruction manual – which is probably all of you – you might miss Fitbit’s recommendation that you cinch up the strap while exercising. They recommend a looser fit throughout the day, but when it comes time to hike or run, tighten it up a notch or two to improve the accuracy of the readings.

Final Judgement:

Buy

As many crews begin their season ramp up with critical refresher training, and PT tests, it’s worth taking “Six Minutes for Safety” to learn more about this nasty thing called Rhabdomyolysis, or “Rhabdo” for short.

Last year we saw a disturbing spike in firefighters suffering over-exertion injuries. Specifically, over a two-month period in 2016, we saw seven reported cases of Rhabdo during PT tests, Pack tests, and crew PT. More troubling, four of those cases occurred over a four day period. Four cases were reported in May, and three were reported in June.

Who was Impacted?

Five Handcrew members

Three type 1 crew members

Two type 2 crew members

One helitack crew member

One engine crew member

Where Did the Incidents Occur?

California (2)

Oregon

Idaho

Nevada

South Dakota

Wyoming

Takeaway: Rhabdo is not limited to one specific group of firefighters (all are at risk). Additionally, geography matters little. The cases were spread across the west about as evenly as possible.

What the heck Is “Rhabdo”?

Rhabdo occurs when skeletal muscle tissues are degraded to the point of disintegration, and begin to leech into your bloodstream. As your damaged muscle tissues breakdown, one of the by-products is a protein called myoglobin. As you’ll no doubt remember from your high school biology class, the kidney is working 24/7 to filter your blood. All the gunk it filters out is turned into urine. Which is why you pee. In a twenty-hour period, the average kidneys will filter around 120-150 quarts of blood and produce one to two quarts of urine. Well, as your muscle tissue is breaking down, and these myoglobins are entering your blood stream, you have a problem. Myoglobin is like Kryptonite to a kidney. The protein can cause some serious damage to the kidney, often times irreversible damage.

Here’s what makes Rhabdo so nasty – you literally piss away your muscle tissue. it’s disgusting. And the long-term effects can be extremely serious, ranging from kidney failure and partial paralysis, and sadly, even death.

Rhabdo is a serious threat to the health and safety of all wildland firefighters, and the most dangerous time is NOW – at the beginning of the season.

Extreme muscle strain, especially in someone who is an untrained athlete; this can happen in elite athletes, too, and it can be more dangerous if there is more muscle mass to break down.

A very high body temperature (hyperthermia) or heat stroke

So, participating in a grueling PT or training in hot environments without proper pre-training exposure. Heat stroke can be a major factor for season firefighters arriving from out-of-state, who have not allotted enough time to acclimate to their new environment. Think a new crew member from Montana who arrived the night before his first day on a crew in Arizona.

How to identify Rhabdo Symptoms

While Rhabdo’s symptoms can be unique and varied, the “classic triad” of symptoms are, according to WebMD, the following:

First off, the person needs to be hospitalized. This isn’t one of those things where you walk the firefighter over to some shade, sit him down, and give him a gatorade and some Advil and tell him to relax. The person’s organs are beginning to shut down and without timely medical intervention, the firefighter is at serious risk. Once at the hospital, the firefighter will be given IVs of fluid to help maintain regular production of urine and prevent the kidneys from failing. And, depending on severity the case, treatment might occur in the ICU, and / or may even require surgery. The good news is that if caught early, and treated appropriately, full-recovery is quite likely.

Mental Stress has an impact. Anxiety has been linked to the onset of Rhabdo symptoms. As anyone who’s ever been the new guy on a crew can attest to, the first day, and the ensuing weeks, can be stressful. Combining physical with mental stress can exacerbate both, and lead to a heightened risk of Rhabdo. Beware of the mindset that your rookies are coming in with.

Maintain proper hydration

Provide recovery opportunities. If firefighters are woozy, wobbly, taking knees, and struggling, it might be worth a break. If firefighters are flopping on to their backs, and struggling to hold themselves upright, or in a kneeling position look out. That’s a problem. The NCAA provides a great chart showing the spectrum of recovery.

Courtesy of the NCAA

How to Help Your Fellow Crew Members

Awareness. Familiarize yourself with the symptoms of Rhabdo. Have an action plan in place if someone begins to show symptoms. Better to have a false positive than a false negative. Keep these two printouts handy in the event that you need to take a crew member to seek medical treatment.

Call it out. We call out snags, rocks, and tripping hazards because they pose a danger to the individual firefighter AND to the crew. Same thing with medical issues. Like so many illnesses, it’s difficult for a person afflicted by Rhabdo to self-diagnose. That’s why it’s critical for crew members to be vigilant in monitoring each other’s performance. If something is off – say something

Conclusion:

Regardless of whether you’re training in Wyoming or SoCal, Rhabdo is a serious danger faced by firefighters. And it should not be written off as something that only impacts the old firedogs, or those who show up for duty in poor shape. In fact, in January 2011, a ridiculously intense pre-season workout landed 13 University of Iowa football players in the hospital, one for Rhabdo. And earlier this year, in January, a member of the University of Oregon football team was hospitalized with Rhabdo following an off-season workout. Let’s be honest – college football player are in better shape than 99% of wildland firefighters. And they’re just as susceptible to Rhabdo.

New Year, New Mindset

With the New Year now upon us, most are starting to think about ways to scrape off the rust from these last few non-fire months. Whether you are new to fire or looking for ways to sharpen your athleticism, now is the perfect time to get moving. Make this season a safe and effective one by developing both the mental and physical fortitude needed for the job.

Firefighters as Tactical Athletes

Wildland firefighting has historically been a seasonal occupation, with young adrenaline-seeking men and women eager to make a year’s worth of wages to help get through the winter months to pursue other jobs, schooling, and adventures. I have even read stories in the first half of the 20th century which tell tales of local rangers recruiting young drunken men from barstools to put in a few chains of line and help extinguish a blaze. Fast-forward to the present time and you would be hard-pressed to find the firefighter who isn’t regularly maintaining some level of physical fitness and aptitude, even in the off season.

Our knowledge of fire and human performance has vastly improved and it is crucial that we treat the profession with the respect that it deserves. Between 2003 and 2007 alone, there were approximately 1,300 fireline injuries reported (Department of Interior, 2015). Even more staggering to see is the 440 men and women who have been killed in the line of duty since 1990 (NIFC, 2015). It is not appropriate nor respectful of those injured or killed throughout the history of the profession to show up to your crew out of shape and unprepared. There is ever-developing science and techniques at our disposal, but it depends on your mindset.

Wildland firefighters (seasonal and permanent) work a hard, dangerous, and oft-badass job which requires technical skill, a sharpened mind, and physical prowess. The Tactical Athlete has been described as one whose occupations requires “Personnel to develop general physical preparedness in addition to technical and tactical skills that are crucial in environments involving civil protection, grave physical danger, or rescue situations” (Scofield and Kardoni, 2015). There has never been a better time than now to start preparing to be mountain tough and fire ready.

Fitness: mental and physical

Here at Hotshot Fitness, we are motivated to help you fulfill your firefighting goals. It doesn’t matter if you are a salty veteran or a green rookie; we all have the capacity to improve. If you look up fitness in a dictionary, you will see it defined as “the quality of being suitable to fulfill a particular role or task”. The wildland firefighting environment requires firefighters to bring mental toughness and physical strength to work, every shift, every roll. Your success at being able to satisfy those demands determines your fitness. And that is 100% in your power to control.

You have the good-fortune of being in the middle of the off-season which means time for self-exploration. What are some of your goals for the upcoming year? Is it to pull your weight on a hotshot crew? How about exhibiting the physical strength and stamina to prove you belong on a saw team? It may even be that you are new to this world and are looking to simply pass the Pack Test and start your career in fire. The point is, there is no goal too small. You can pour over the articles on this site and find physical tips to get your ass in gear, however, it comes down to the action that you take.

Extreme Ownership is a term coined by and title of a book by retired Navy SEALs Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. I believe this book should be read anyone looking not only to lead others, but those wanting to take control of their own life. In it, the authors discuss how one must own everything about their decisions and actions and take responsibility for the outcome. As you kick your off-season training into high gear, we highly recommend that you adopt an “Extreme Ownership” mindset. Jocko also has an amazing podcast that we highly recommend checking out. He has also been featured on the Tim Ferriss podcast, and some of his advice made its way into Tim’s latest book, Tools of Titans (another HF highly-recommended read).

About the Author:

Anthony Harrell spent three years with the Ukonom Hotshots. His adventures in fire inspired him to pursue a career in Physical Therapy, and he recently graduated from the Doctor of Physical Therapy program at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) / San Francisco State University.

He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has been a contributor to Hotshot Fitness since 2016.

I’ll be honest – a foam roller saved my life. Not literally of course, but it did make a huge impact. Back when I interviewed Carrie Lucero of Road Runner Sports, we were talking about everything running related, and she asked me about foam rollers. I told her that I had never heard of a foam roller. She looked at me quizzically. Here we were, half-way through an interview, and suddenly she must have been thinking “This guy runs a fitness website and has no idea WTF a foam roller is?”

It was pretty embarrassing. But we continued with the interview, and I promised to buy a foam roller. She told me it would help reduce the IT Band issues that I was having. And after just a week, my IT Band issues were gone. And I have been a fan of foam rollers ever since.

How do they work?

Think of it as a self-induced massage. Rather than having a masseuse deliver targeted pressure to your muscles, you’re inverting the situation. You’re balancing your body weight on a small area (the foam roller), and that provides the necessary pressure. As contributor Anthony Harrell explained in his article, “Got Back Pain?“, when you’re using a foam roller, you’re performing a “self-myofascial release technique” (sounds pretty naughty – but we verified its SFW status). Over time and with excessive exertion, soft tissue (like muscles) become short, tight and sore. Massaging the tissue helps to lengthen and relax the muscles, which will help with recovery AND performance. All good things. But the most important thing is – it just feels good. The feeling is very comparable to hopping into the shower when you have poison oak. Scalding hot water on poison oak produces this bizarre feeling of both pain and pleasure.

The foam roller is a bit like that, but definitely dialed down a couple notches.

When Should I Use Them?

Before and/or after a workout. My IT Band would act like a dog that knew it was going to the vet. It would be fine throughout the day, but the second the running shoes came out – BAM – sudden pain. It was the weirdest thing. But spending five minutes on the foam roller, targeting the sides of both of my knees, as well as my hamstrings, really made a difference.

Youtube has a slew of videos that you can check out to target specific areas. For me, I have had the most success using it on my legs to target sore quads, hamstrings, and my IT band. I have found it to be less successful at alleviating tension in my lower back, but that might be an issue of form rather than an indictment of the roller’s effectiveness.

All that being said, the foam roller is a relatively inexpensive addition to your arsenal of recovery products, and if you’re regularly following our programs, you’re going to need one!

Buying Options:

Amazon has got you covered. Check out some of these options.

For more advice on injury prevention and recovery, check out the “Hotshot Fitness Rehab Kit” for our recommendations on products that will keep you #FireReady.